It definitely IS an hardware issue (Score 2, Interesting)

"You're talking about the GeoPort"

No I wasn't. The performa 5200 didn't have a Geoport included (see Apple's product description).

The sound was excellent, much better as anything recorded on tape or using a crapy digital encoding like in todays answering machines.

All in all I was very satisfied with it, and wouldn't have an air plane company totally crashed it after landing, I would still use it today as a very convenient answering machine/fax.

The money they gave me to compensate the dramatic lost of this BIG answering machine covered partly the cost of the G4 I have now. And whatever anyone thinks about OS X, if it's stable enough to run 24h/day 365days/year, it's then stable enough to be also an answering machine (as well as much more). I don't see why this should be worst than using a G4 to browse the web, listen to MP3's, were, for that use, a Quadra would be enough :)